


The Other Side of the Coin

by justanothersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cheating, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Kids, Pregnancy, Secret Relationship, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:59:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7909135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint told you that first night that he had a different kind of life, one full of danger and adventure, but it tired him so much that he needed a respite, someplace he could go to recharge and remember the days of his own youth in just such a small town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side of the Coin

You love Clint Barton. There’s no escaping that fact.

You’d fallen for him the moment you laid eyes on him, when he stumbled into your sleepy middle-of-nowhere farm town and stopped at the lunch counter where you worked, asking if there was any place nearby he might stay. You had directed him to the home of an old woman on the outskirts of town who kept rooms for let, and he had thanked you with a smile that had charmed you to the very core.

When he showed up days later at your father’s hardware store, asking after hinges to replace the barn door for Mrs. Murphy, the lady renting him a room, you’d all but gone head over heels.

He asked you for a date that same day, and you had accepted without hesitation.

Everyone else seemed a little more skeptical: your parents, your friends, the folks you had known all your life. Few people ever left your own, the insular little community growing no larger but taking care of itself all the same, one main drag of small businesses surrounded by hundred year old homes and a town square that boasted itself the happiest little hamlet in the midwest on a brass placard near the bandstand.

You hadn’t grown up with any dreams of leaving, always assuming you’d graduate high school and marry one of the boys you had known since childhood, perhaps run the store after your father decided to retire. Some of that had come true; you went through your schooling and though you showed promise, you decided against college, content to stay in your sleepy little town. You took a job at the lunch counter and moved into one of the little apartments off of Main Street with a friend from school, happy enough in your familiar routine. You never imagined the handsome stranger sweeping into town and sweeping you off your feet. 

 

Clint told you that first night that he had a different kind of life, one full of danger and adventure, but it tired him so much that he needed a respite, someplace he could go to recharge and remember the days of his own youth in just such a small town. 

The thought that it could be you -- that you could become that respite for him, that sanctuary -- had lit a fire in your heart. It was only a few days later that you took him into your bed, and when, in a matter of weeks, you realized that your carelessness had gotten the best of you both, Clint had only grinned and taken you to the courthouse in town.

You wore your mother’s white lace dress, the one she had worn in that very courthouse some decades before; Clint borrowed a suit from your older brother. That night, when he held you close and whispered how much he loved you, you had believed him.

You would always believe him.

Mrs. Murphy decided it was high time for her to make the move to the little retirement center just alongside the highway out of town, and sold her big old farmhouse to you and your new husband at a bargain. You spent quiet days together, fixing it up and making it ready for the little one on the way. Clint had painted the baby’s room a pale lavender shade, good for a boy or a girl, he had insisted, and you had laughed at the little flecks of paint in his dark blonde hair.

He never stopped telling you that you were beautiful, even when you grew as big as a house, your belly swollen, tented beneath a flower-print dress.

When it was time, he drove you to the county hospital and held your hand, never taking his eyes from your face until the piercing cries of your newborn son rang out in the room. There had been tears in his eyes, shining brightly, the mixture of aqua blue and soft green your first boy would grow to have.

Clint had to leave a little while, after the baby came. It was a part of his life that you were determined to accept -- his need to leave sometimes, to right a wrong somewhere out in the world. He always came back to you. He always came home.

Tanner was three when the next baby was on the way, and that was the first time that Clint brought her home with him.

“This is your Auntie Nat,” he had announced to your son, tweaking his nose as he spoke, and the woman had knelt to his level and stuck out her hand in a formal greeting.

“Hello Tanner,” she said, voice and expression as serious as if she were greeting some visiting dignitary and not a three-year-old boy in Spongebob pajamas. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Your little boy frowned a moment and then looked to you for guidance; your husband had sidled up to you, slipped his arms around your waist and kissed you behind your ear. You smiled and nodded to your son, who turned back to ‘Auntie Nat’ with a grin.

He grabbed her hand and tried to pull her along, running for the stairs. “Come see my room!” he shouted, and the woman followed, stifling a laugh.

“I’m glad your home,” you told Clint, as he sighed into your hair.

“Glad to be back,” he rumbled in response. “You don’t mind me bringing Nat, do you? She never had a home like this, thought she’d like to spend some quiet time.”

You forced your misgivings away. “Of course,” you told him. You covered his hands with your own and dragged them to cover your stomach, flat now and not showing as yet, but due to start soon enough. “Though it may be a little more crowded around here than you’d expect pretty soon.”

His eyes had lit up, the grin spreading across his face bright enough to drown out the sun. “Yeah?” he has asked, and you nodded, even blushing a little at sharing the news.

Clint had let out a small whoop and turned you in his embrace, kissing you soundly and whispering how much he loved you.

You never doubted that. You loved Clint Barton, and he loved you. 

But Hawkeye? 

Hawkeye loved the Black Widow.

 

You had begun to suspect if fairly early on, but you had put it down to your own feelings of inadequacy and nothing more than that. You had always been told you were pretty, but you knew that it was small-town pretty; Natasha was beautiful in a way that you had never seen up close, the sort of gorgeous that littered the months-old fashion magazines at the beauty parlor in town but had never before stepped foot inside its borders. 

With hair that glowed like a fiery sunset and in innate sense of grace that left you feeling clumsy and oafish on swollen ankles, still carrying some of the baby weight from Tanner and only going to add to it soon enough, it was like standing next to a supernova. You couldn’t help but expect Clint to marvel at her, the same way you did.

But he still slept in your bed every night, held you close and made love to you, whispered his sweet nothings into your ear, how excited he was about the new baby, your growing family. And you believed him, god, you believed him.

She kept a respectable distance after Joshua was born. Clint spent more time at home than he had in a long while, and it was easy to pretend that the world outside your home didn’t exist. Of course, the rest of the world eventually came calling, spiriting him away again. You couldn’t be angry; you knew the decision you were making when you married him.

You could let the world have him when they needed him.

It only killed you knowing that she would have him as well.

 

Tanner was eight and Joshua four when your daughter was born, and Clint arrived only just in time to see her brought into the world. The boys were with your parents. As far as they knew, Clint was a military man and that was what took him away so much. You let them believe it, even though there were whispers in town and sad looks now and again from those who delved more into the media than months-old fashion magazines and the farm report on talk radio.

You held your head high.

You didn’t even pass a thought when Clint had suggested you call your little girl Talia, finding it sweet and charming in its way, until weeks later when he had to leave and said that when he returned, Auntie Nat would come to shower the little one with presents.

You walked past the nursery during that particular visit and found them crowded together around the crib, your baby girl cradled in her arms with Clint standing just behind her, his chest flush against her back.

“She’s so beautiful,” Natasha had said softly.

You could hear the grin in Clint’s voice when he responded. “Isn’t she?”

Then Natasha began to sing, voice soft and low, the words in Russian, and though you couldn’t understand them, you knew it was a lullaby; she rocked Talia to sleep in her arms, and you went downstairs to make lunch.

 

Sometimes you wondered what would happen if you told him you were tired of small town life, that you were ready to leave it behind and take your small family to the big city, to live with your husband full times. You fantasized about it, daydreamed his response; in the better ones, he was always joyful at the suggestion, and you would know that Hawkeye loved you just a well as Clint.

But you never said it, never allowed yourself to intrude on his other life. You wish that she would have done the same.

 

Rain had been coming and the boys were down with the flu; they’d left their bikes in the yard the day before and you’d sighed in annoyance, wondering where your husband and his visitor had gone off to as you rushed outside to pull the Joshua’s trike and Tanner’s new two-wheeler (still with training wheels) into the old barn to keep them from rusting.

You heard the voices float down from the loft and you froze, a handlebar in each hand, at the entrance to the barn.

“Clint!” Natasha hissed, half-playful, half-serious. “Not here. You know better.”

You heard your husband groan. “Please, Tasha,” he murmured, voice carrying in the empty barn. “Need you.”

Her soft sighs followed and you were rooted to the spot, until the wind blew in and sent frigid drops of rain scattering across your skin and the back of your blouse.

You pushed the bikes inside and crept away, as quietly as you could.  
You spent the evening in your rocking chair, thinking long and hard about the life you had fallen into, hands clasped over your stomach. You hadn’t told him yet. You had planned on doing it that night. Now, you didn’t know.

They came in for dinner late, not offering any excuse. You didn’t ask. But when Clint went to wash up and Natasha tried to be helpful, asking if she could do anything as you prepared the meal, you blandly told her that she had hay in her hair, and went about your own business.

Clint came to your bed that night. You couldn’t bring yourself to hesitate when when he wrapped his arms around you.

 

Because no matter what, you knew that you loved Clint Barton, with all your heart. And most of the time, he loved you too.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I hate what they did to Clint's storyline in canon (eff Joss Whedon and his hard-on for beauty and the beast romances, WE GET IT ALREADY JOSS) and while this is kind of a take on that, it's also something weird my brain sparked for no good reason.
> 
> I am so, so sorry.


End file.
